I think Castro was definitely a leftist from the very beginning. People usually (back then and now) view socialism and Communism as somewhat different (Americans can usually stomach socialism.)
Castro wasn’t a staunch capitalist, that much was known. Our problems with Cuba are like our problems with a few other Communist regimes that sided with the Soviets during the Cold War. Primarily, we saw their ideological shift as an automatic alliance with the USSR. This wasn’t actually always the way things had to be.
As Yugoslavia showed, you could buy into similar ideologies without buying into a staunch alliance with the USSR.
It’s entirely possible that if we had offered to help Castro out in Cuba with financial and material aid, Cuba would have become an ally of ours in the Cold War.
There was a similar opportunity with China right after World War II–we didn’t take advantage of it (at least not initially.) What many American policy makers failed to realize was that Communism wasn’t the monolithic block that the Soviets wanted it to be or that Americans feared it to be. Sure, in Eastern Europe Communism’s spread was a direct spread of the Soviet sphere–this was repeated in other regions as well. But in certain countries the spread of a communist or socialist system didn’t necessarily mean an automatic alliance with the Soviets.
China had a lot of longstanding “issues” with the Soviets, and never had a desire to play second-fiddle to Russian interests. That’s why Nixon’s overtures to the Chinese were so successful, that rift was really already there–but no one had taken advantage of it yet.
I agree things could have been handled much differently in Cuba (and despite Castro’s uglier aspects, a dictator is a dictator and the guy he overthrew was a dictator as well), we can’t be certain of the outcome but I don’t think it impossible Castro would have been “okay” with normalized relations with the United States.
As for Castro recommending the United States be nuked, that’s not really meaningful, the Soviets weren’t about to let Castro make such a decision.
Yeah, I know the history, but I don’t think Castro’s invitation to the Soviet Union was directly caused by the Bay of Pigs. It probably would have happened one way or another. I suppose it was a contributing factor.
Interestingly, according to Sidney Blumenthal, our current president seems to think that if he does make “tough” (unpopular) decisions (at the behest of certain others) it somehow makes him more “historic”:
We certainly know more about his personal system of morality than we did, but it’s pretty hard to make a case that he was a unilaterally bad president. The Cuban embargo has been a mess for everyone involved, sure, but he was instrumental in solving the Cuban missile crisis; he used his military might to force public universities in the South to allow black students to enroll for the first time; he did wonders for the arts and the US’s international reputation; etc.
You might argue that letting Johnson into his White House was a mistake, but maybe he couldn’t have foreseen LBJ’s rape of our economy and our international reputation. And the Bay of Pigs thing is certainly a black mark, but my point is that he did a lot of good things too–and really important things, especially concerning the civil rights movement. He also founded the Peace Corps, BTW, even though he himself was a war hero. Speaking of which, don’t forget that at a time when other rich white men were using their connections to get out of fighting, Kennedy was using his connections to get in to the war, despite being rejected for his back problems, because he felt it was his duty. And despite having a bad back, he towed his broken boat with injured men in it to shore through shark-infested waters. The man was pure badass, on top of doing a lot of great things for the US and the world.
And anti-Spanish sentiment ran high back then, which seems a little silly now. AIUI, this is partly due to the yellow press mining the Spanish empire (such as it was) for all the sensationalist stories it could give–most of which was made-up, since back then people pretty much had to believe whatever they read in the paper. Apocryphal stories of Spanish atrocities and war crimes were common–not that it’s hard to believe that the Spanish empire could commit atrocities in Latin America, but I think a more empirical view might have come up with a more rational picture of it.
I have no specific knowledge of his popularity at the time, but I suspect it would have been fairly high. We were at peace, the economy was chuggling along (a chicken in every garage and all that). And given that he napped through his terms, it’s unlikely he did anything that particularly pissed off people.
While he probably isn’t considered a bad president, I think he gets low marks for doing little (except perhaps among the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” crowd).
Sort of. Coolidge had enough political popularity to crush his forgettable 1924 opponent by a popular-vote margin that would have embarrassed Walter Mondale. (The Democratic lock on the South mitigated the electoral college margin.) On the other hand, he never had much of a personal following because of his aloof personality.
After his term, his reputation fell during the Great Depression and the big-government consensus of the Forties through the Sixties, then recovered somewhat during the Reagan years. You won’t find much consensus today; conservatives and especially libertarians love Coolidge; liberals mock him.
On balance, though, I would say that Coolidge has recovered to about where he was when he left office.
In fact, it was gross misunderstanding and fantastic miscalculation by Kennedy (and also by Khrushchev) that led to the unnecessary public faceoff of the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequent fall from power of the latter. Khrushchev needed to be able to demonstrate to hardline military leaders that he could stand up to the West and get the genuine threat of Jupiter IRBMs out of Europe. He elected to do so by placing missiles in Cuba and negotiating a common withdrawal by both parties, each of whom could claim to have “won” with no one losing face. Unfortunately, the US got early wind of the emplacement from KGB Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, including layouts of missile emplacements which were then seen in imagery from U-2 overflights in Cuba. The US took this to be a direct threat and precursor to encirclement, rather than what it was; a gambit by the Soviet Union and a desire by Castro to gain military stability and legitimacy following the foiled Bay of Pigs Invasion. The really utterly stupid thing about this is that a) the Jupiters in Turkey and Greece were obsolescent and soon to be replaced by Atlas and Titan ICBMs anyway, so withdrawal (which the use did about 18 months later) was going to happen anyway, b) Khrushchev was legitimately a reformer, and had he remained in office (and his economic and political reforms been effective) it likely would have softened if not ended the Cold War, and c) in the end this just encouraged greater proliferation rather than serving as the basis for further negotiations in arms reduction, which instead had to wait until the late 'Sixties.
McNamara is not responsible, by the way, for defusing the CMC, a point even he makes clear in his book covering the incident and Errol Morris’ documentary, The Fog of War. It was, according to Mac, former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, minor Cabinet member to Kennedy, and personal friend of Khrushchev Llewellyn “Tommy” Thompson who encouraged Kennedy to respond “softly” to a more conciliatory message from Khrushchev rather than the harsher demands clearly being dictated by Kremlin hardliners.
To be fair, Kennedy was following the policy established by the previous Eisenhower administration, and during his tenure involvement was limited to ostensible advisement and some economic support to Diem. With the execution of Diem, that sort of involvement became untenable. According to McNamara (although the correspondence doesn’t conclusively establish this one way or another) Kennedy wished to limit involvement and would have pulled out of Viet Nam in the '64-'65 timeframe. It was under Johnson–whose virulent anti-Communist fervor and blind adherence to the “domino theory” made him unwilling to listen to both Cabinet and military advisors who recommended limiting involvement and maintaining an exit strategy–that the massive buildup and commitment, and later mass attrocities of carpet bombing and deforestation, occurred.
Reagan gets a lot more credit, and got away with a lot more failures with reputation unscathed, than deserved. However, although the specific events of Iran-Contra Affair occurred during Reagan’s tenure, the underlying mechanisms–the private intelligence service funded by drug and arms sales, the transfer of weapons and tacit support for despotic regimes in Southeast and Central Asia, Saharan Africa, and Latin and South American, the undermining of American domestic politics, money laundering for organizations which would later become known as supporting terrorism, and basically alienating the hell out of everyone–were in motion long before Reagan was elected President. Reagan and the people backing him certainly utilized and fed this apparatus (in opposition to Carter’s attempt to destroy it and in turn destroyed by it) but they only continued existing policy that had been going on since the inception of American non-military intelligence and the beginning of the Cold War.
I think Clinton slicked his way through things as well, coming out looking very accomplished while accomplishing very little. Even his impeachment ultimately helped him, being (rightly) perceived as partisan, petty, and pointless and rehabilitating an otherwise indistinguished administration plagued by utter incompetence in foreign affairs and failures of major domestic policy implementations. It didn’t hurt that he served during the largest economic boom of the 20th Century, despite the fact that (Al Gore’s singlehanded construction of the Internet aside) the Clinton Administration really had very little to do with the growth.
With regard to the o.p.'s assertion, I can’t see where Truman comes off as being especially successful. He failed to forestall the events leading to the Cold War (which may have been inevitable), the involvement in Korea was, if not an outright disaster, a quagmire which started the trend of U.S. involvement in Asian conflict without insight as to the underlying cultural issues, and he seems to have been generally ignorant on a wide range of things. His successor, Eisenhower, generally gets intermediate marks in history, but in many ways was clearly one of the most effective administrators in the Cold War era. Even his policies that I disagree with were well thought out in their implications and effects, and in general his tenure was noted for a reduction in international tensions and moderation, something his successors utterly failed to do.
I don’t normally have any reason to do this to you, but that was unnecessary, unless it was meant as snark. The idea that Gore actually claimed anything of the sort has been debunked countless times for almost a decade now.
Actually, Kennedy’s faults ran very deep. With regard to South Vietnam, he believed all of the lies and fabrications that the CIA fed to him. He believed the nonsense that the CIA cooked up about getting Diem out of the way-he (Kennedy) was told that once the corrupt Diem was disposed of, there would be an “honest” South Vietnam government, which the people would support. Instead, the military junta that took over was one of the most corrupt governments on earth –and NOBODY wanted to die for it.
As for Cuba, Kennedy was told (through intermediaries) that Russia would place missiles there if we placed Atlas missiles in Turkey-Kennedy called the bluff and instead was bluffed. The confrontation with Khruschev was unnecessary and dangerous-Kennedy was being pushed by hawks in the Air Force (Gen. LeMay). Instead of offering Khruschev a face-saving way out, Kennedy backed him into a corner… Not smart!
My question : had Kennedy lived, would his presidency have been mired in scandal? Surely somebody would have leaked the info on his many extra-marital affairs (including “Fiddle” and “faddle”)?
My belief is that Kennedy might well have died in office-he was suffering from Addison’s disease and the effect of massive doses of steroids.
I don’t know Johnson was anymore anti-communist or pro “Domino Theory” than Kennedy. Here’s an interview with Jack Valenti that deals with the question, and Johnson’s motives for escelating in Vietnam:
You can read the interview, but basically he gives the following reasons:
He felt a need to continue Kennedy’s Vietnam policy.
The generals told him we could win the Vietnam war without a serious committment, by a policy of gradual escalation that would force the North Vietnamese to negotiate.
He was afraid of the domestic criticism that would ensue from pulling out of Vietnam, abandoning the Vietnamese, and surrendering to Communism.
Ah, it was just hyperbolic snark intended as a mildly humorous aside.
There were never any plans to base Atlas missiles in Turkey or indeed any foreign soil; the whole purpose of ICBMs was, in fact, to secure nuclear assets within domestic territories to ensure security and limit the diplomatic conflicts that came with having strategic weapons on foreign soil, even in NATO allies. The need for this became evident after the problems we had negotiating the placement of the PGM-19 ‘Jupiter’ in France (which in part resulted in the exit of France from involvement in NATO military operations and planning), and the nitpicking issues we had in basing Jupiters in Turkey and Italy. Even the basing of PGM-17 ‘Thor’ in Britain was problematic.
So, IOW, “Kennedy’s faults” were in trusting his Cabinet and his intelligence agencies. I wouldn’t mind a long string of presidents with those deep “faults”.